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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (6436)	2/16/2000 2:19:00 PM
From: Scott C. Lemon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Hello Raymond, > Thanks for that informative post. At present I am limited to one > puter, Medusa, which has 3 monitors, 3 video cards and one cable > connection. ;-) You have me beat by one monitor ... I only have two! ;-) I'm actually looking to upgrade to two of the Apple LCD monitors ... I have a good line on them through a relative ... > I've been considering a laptop and your discussion of using 802.11 > gear has just now completely turned me around on my plan, which was > to use an Ethernet hub and cable system. Yep ... once you've gone wireless, you'll never go back ... ;-) > What is the form factor on your laptop radio connection? PCMCIA? Yes. The laptop has a PCMCIA card which has a small "nub" of an antenna sticking out. The "Access Point" is a box about the size of a small 5 or 8 port hub, with an Ethernet connection, and another PCMCIA card stuck into it. > I'd love to get something internal if possible. The PCMCIA cards > are just too fragile for a wild man like me, (or was that klutz?) > Oh, whatever. So with PCMCIA the antenna does stick out, but it's not bad, and as I said it's fairly strong. I've hit them before, but not broken one off. You can visit the Lucent site to get an idea: wavelan.com I'm going to a presentation by Cabletron on Friday to see their new offering ... I believe it's also based on the Lucent chipsets ... > The reason I was curious about the 802.11a devices is to try to > sort out Wi-Lan's niche in the spec battles. It appears to me that > Cisco will be able to do its flavor of OFDM without paying a > royalty to Wi-Lan. Comments welcomed. I haven't done too much research into the details of the Wi-LAN patents, but I would guess that they will be left behind if they try to exact payments from the other vendors. It seems that much of the attention will turn to 802.11b and that new technologies will be developed where companies compete on abilities, rather than blackmail ... just my opinion. I actually hope to see Cisco move forward without any payments ... I believe it promotes more growth and progress ... ;-) > I've looked at the Aironet line, and Breezecom. I'm curious as to > which radio manufacturer you have chosen and what prompted your > choice. TIA I've been looking at these solutions also, but have always been disappointed by the costs, or licensing. So a number of years ago, I came across a company called FreeWave ... they are located in Colorado. It seems that they are a defense contractor (or something like that) that has turned it's spread-spectrum technologies and manufacturing processes towards commercial products. freewave.com A year ago, a speaker at the Gilder Telecosm Conference also talked about this company and their products. They are slightly pricey (~$1300 per radio), but they fit well for both base and mobile use, they are the size of a pack of cigarettes, and they fit well with my research into wearable computers. At Comdex I just came across the first real potential competitor to FreeWave - a company called WirelessMountain. They are very early in the development of their product, by they have the same type of technology ... just not as polished ... at half or a third of the cost! I'm currently picking up a set of their radios to test for my purposes ... wirelessmountain.com I might end up having both sets around for comparison purposes ... I have some ideas for some real world tests. (About 10 miles from my house is a mountain that goes up to 11,750ft. I'm at 5,600ft. I'm thinking of hiking it this year with my laptop and seeing if I can get on the net from the top ... with full video/voice conferencing. If I do it, I'll post to SI from the top! ;-) Scott C. Lemon